As I read this article about Google’s new ad format on Techcrunch I got really excited about it. Google says

We’re currently running a small experiment of a new ad format that helps users sign up more easily for email subscriptions or other free newsletters. This new ad format contains a box within the ad that displays a user’s Google email address (if logged in). If a user chooses to click ‘Subscribe to newsletter’ then the email address is sent to the advertiser directly, which is clearly disclosed within the ad itself.

See the ads in Action. Images credit TechCrunch.

And when you are subscribed you see

Thank you Google, what a great way to start The New Year! I am really excited to get those ads rolled out to my Adwords account. I think you should also start using AWeber now for your blog.

For those who are not aware about what AWeber can do for your blog, read my AWeber review

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Multinational companies even don’t understand the concept of Email spam and send emails which are actually spam. Let me first clarify what is an email spam with an example?

Yesterday I got an email from TimesJobs.com – A Job portal where I registered few years back.

See the email I received from them. Click on image to view the complete Email.

Taking few points from the CAN-SPAM Act (PDF Link), all email messages must:

• Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future emails (unsubscribe).
• Tell recipients where you’re located i.e. a valid physical postal address.

Email from Timesjobs has neither. They don’t have their physical postal address nor offer any unsubscribe link in the email and so according to CAN SPAM Act this is spam.

Yes I do agree that I registered at Timesjobs.com but that does not allow them to spam me for the rest of my life? Priorities changes for user. I am not looking for jobs and on the flip side I am looking to hire people.

If I remember correctly I was not looking for a job switch even in 2006-2007 when I joined my so called last job. I have not logged on to any job site for years and still get emails from majority of the job sites because I registered with them few years back.

Getting on the other side of the table

As a business I prefer AWeber which apart from handling all those issues of being compliance with CAN SPAM Act can allow you to have list of inactive users i.e. users who have no activities for some months / years. You can create segment users who are inactive.

Notify them that due to inactivity for such a long period their emails are being deleted. You will see more unsubscribe from these segment of users but users like me who don’t have the time to open those emails can safely be removed from your list to create more active and responsive list of users.

So are you sending spam Emails unknowingly?

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If you have decided to use the power of opt-in email based marketing campaigns to grow your business and increase your profits, you will definitely want to consider send out email newsletters. To be effective, there are some things that every newsletter publisher should know. The following 10 email newsletter design tips are important and should be considered when you are setting up your marketing campaign.

1. Consistency and Timing are Key: If you are going to communicate with your potential or current clients via email newsletters, it is very important that you do it on a schedule or as close to a schedule as possible. For example, consider sending your newsletter on Thursday afternoon because people don’t want to be bombarded on Monday or Friday and on Thursday afternoon they start looking for distractions from work for a few minutes.
2. Proofread: Always proofread your marketing materials, especially email newsletters. If you are not a native speaker, get someone else to write the content if necessary. If you send out an email newsletter with bad spelling, grammar or language usage, you will find yourself losing potential clients quickly.
3. Use Fresh Content: If you can’t take the time to write content for your newsletter, it would be better not to send it. If you send people the same content they see in other places, they will lose faith in your expertise about your subject matter. There are many places where you can find writers to produce new content for you and it’s less expensive than you might expect.
4. Use Personalization When Possible: If you can address the newsletter specifically to the recipient, it will help you to build a relationship with them. Not every piece of content should be written in the first person perspective, but at least a hi should be included.
5. Have a Test Audience: Let someone, anyone, read the newsletter before it is sent. This will help you to make sure the information is well presented and that it will be well-received by your audience. Try to find readers who can relate with your target audience.
6. Use First Person When You Can: Using a first person perspective enables you to talk directly to the audience. Give snippets of your experience and tell the reader why you are a recognised expert in your field.
7. Don’t Overload with Ads: If you send a newsletter, it is important that any ads you include are not obtrusive. Keep ads to a minimum. Many affiliate marketers lost their lead lists due to spam blockers when they loaded their newsletters and emails with links and ads. Learn from their example and keep advertising for outsiders and yourself to a minimum.
8. Offer a Text Only Version: Many people still do not use html based email. If you are going to send out a newsletter via email, send it in plain text unless there is an option to subscribe to an html version. If you want to give everyone access to html formatted content, give them a link to your website instead.
9. Ask Your Readers for Comments and Content: Any time you are able to include content written by your readers, you are actually appealing to your other readers to stay in contact with you. A testimonial is word of mouth advertising that is not in the form of an ad. This is a great tool. Get actual testimonials, however. Fake testimonials are very obvious.
10. Incorporate Social Networking: Whenever possible, give links to your twitter and Facebook pages. If you don’t have these, get them! You must begin to publish your email newsletters on Facebook if you want to keep the attention of your audience. Today, there is a move away from email and toward social media websites like these. It is where people are meeting to discuss products, services and hot topics. You can’t afford not to include this information in your newsletters.

Using these ten hot tips for email newsletters, you will be on your way to more successful and productive marketing campaigns. You can get more leads when a high quality newsletter is passed from one reader to a few new readers each time it is sent out. Always send high quality newsletters and you will see an immediate return on your time and investment.

Contributed by James Adams, one of a team of writers working at CartridgeSave.co.uk as a product reviewer and blogger. Recently he has been writing reviews of new consumables for Epson printers and other brands.

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I have been using AWeber for quite some time now and I think AWeber needs to have that extra to beat the competitor’s Like GetResponse, CampaignMonitor, iContact and many others and so here I have my wish list for AWeber.

1. Pay as you go

Go4Expert Newsletter is sent monthly and so pay as you go can help me reduce my AWeber cost. CampaignMonitor offers such an option.

2. No charges for unsubscribed leads

CampaignMonitor charges only for subscribers to whom email can be delivered and not for all the leads stored in your list. If I have to bring my charges down I have to remove the people who have unsubscribed. This is fine till you don’t have a long list of follow-ups but if you have a long follow up chain this may not sound right because once user wants to re-subscribe he may start the chain from beginning.

3. Premium list

I am not sure if premium list or paid list is available by any Autoresponders in the market currently but I think this is a must have feature where we not only have free to subscribe list but also have some premium list where user are charged monthly fees to remain on the list. Something like an active PayPal subscriber only remains on the list.

Share your wish list for AWeber in comments below.

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2. Is Aweber Costly?
3. AWeber Footer SlideUp – My First WordPress Plugin

After my second plugin for GetResponse Footer SlideUp I got so many emails and comments asking for similar plugin for feedburner and so created Feedburner Footer Slideup Form plugin for those who still want to be using Feedburner for Email Subscriptions. My personal preference is always AWeber over Feedburner for RSS to email.

Plugin Description

Footer Slideup Form is one of the best ways to ask your user to subscribe to your list without any interruption or blocking and this plugin does exactly that. It adds an FeedBurner subscribe sliding form in the footer of your WordPress blog.

Installation Instructions

Please Follow the exact Steps to install and activate this plugin.

1. Activate Email Subscription for your Feed in Feedburner.
2. Grab the HTML code of your HTML Form and Search for uri=SomeString. SomeString is your unique identifier for your Feedburner feed.
3. Upload the plugin folder feedburner-footer-slideup at wp-content/plugins.
4. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
5. Edit Options under the Menu ‘Feedburner Footer SlideUp’. Paste the FeedBurner URI String generated in Step 2.

FAQ’s

How to Edit the Tag Line Subscribe By Email for Weekly Updates?

Heading Tag Line (Optional) in the admin interface of the plugin. Leaving it blank will show the default tagline.

I have more Queries, Can you Help?

Yes I will be more than happy to help. Just post them in comments below.

No related posts.

After loosing 30,000 newsletter readers, Go4Expert’s New Newsletter Readership crossed 12k with AWeber but this time I have much more control over the stats, user un-subscription and other inputs from user. AWeber provides an option to get comment from readers when they unsubscribe. As expected majority of them would give you general reason like

• Nothing
• Misconception
• Thanks
• Sorry
• Unsubscribe
• I don’t want this
• Not what I needed
• I don’t need it.
• I don’t have time.
• I want to unsubcribe
• You suck
• I don’t like
• No comments
• I don’t check this mail frequently.
• Subscribed by mistake
• Bored
• Not interested
• I am busy
• Clearing inbox
• Dont send.

But in the midst of such general reasons there are some hidden gems.

• Actually didn’t find your letter with much knowledge
• I never subscribed for this, someone else is using my email
• Because I don’t want anymore
• I couldn’t find my way around ..
• I could not receive proper information about c#

Are you using your readers un-subscription to your advantage? If no then it is not too late to act now. Start getting feedback from them as to how you could have kept them away from going off.

Again it is not only at Go4Expert.com where I did this test but did the same thing on CodeItWell.com course which produced wide range of results.

• I don’t check this mail frequently / I want to use another account
• Its good!!!!!!!!! but i donot want it may be need in future
• It does not help me in any thing
• Information given is not quite interesting.
• It was nice
• It is useful
• Got what i wanted
• Thanks for a course
• I decided to quit temporarily
• Everyday I have no time to read this. When I am free, subscribe again.
• It is just a wastage of time
• Is just like irritating me
• plz don’t send me e-mail again
• Not for me
• I have enjoyed much and benifitted. thanx to this team.
• because this was not helpful for me…
• Unsubscribed because i think this servise is not true. its not a way to earn money
• hey now i dont it thats it kk
• actualy ur site may not provide clear information n i think there may b some risk in making online money to thats y i unsubscribe
• Not satisfied with the content
• I will subscribe with another address, coz this 1 was getting full. I really apreciate the information i was receiving, thank you so much.

See the gems in the comments. They give me a reason to improve my course and weekly updates.

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My first ever WordPress plugin – AWeber Footer SlideUp form crossed 100 downloads in few hours and many user including TerryJett rated it as best plugin of 2010 ( I know it is not ).

We all know AWeber is not the only autoresponder and so many wanted me to have a plugin for general use and it can be done in future but as of now based on reader’s demand I have created similar plugin for GetResponse – GetResponse Footer Slideup Form

I personally do not use GetResponse on my blogs but they offers a free trial account to start with which has helped me immensely to develop this plugin. The reason I do not use GetResponse is because there is no reason to move out of AWeber. For more details you can read my views on AWeber Vs GetResponse.

Plugin Description

Footer Slideup Form is one of the best ways to ask your user to subscribe to your list without any interruption or blocking and this plugin does exactly that. It adds GetResponse slider subscribe form in the footer of your WordPress blog. GetResponse is an autoresponder which allows you to send series of email message to subscribers.

This plugin is only for GetResponse form and for AWeber please use AWeber Footer SlideUp form plugin.

Installation Instructions

Please Follow the exact Steps to install and activate this plugin.

1. Generate an Inline form using the GetResponse Interface.
2. Grab the HTML code of your GetResponse Form and Search for Hidden Form Fields You will find them between the form tag.
3. Upload the plugin folder getresponse-footer-slideup into your plugins directory located at wp-content/plugins.
4. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
5. Edit Options under the Menu ‘GetResponse Footer SlideUp’. Paste the hidden form HTML Code generated in Step 2. Remember not to include the custom_http_referer hidden field from HTML code

<input id="error_url" name="error_url" type="hidden" />
<input id="confirmation_url" name="confirmation_url" type="hidden" />
<input id="campaign_name" name="campaign_name" type="hidden" value="YourCampaignName" />
<input id="custom_ref" name="custom_ref" type="hidden" />

<input id="campaign_name" name="campaign_name" type="hidden" value="YourCampaignName" />

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There are many Footer Slideup form’s available but the problem is they all charge for the script and that is not one time fees but month on month fees for the script. Being a developer myself I thought of creating my own and many of my clients as well as blog users asked the same script from me and so here I come with my first official WordPress plugin AWeber Footer Slideup.

Plugin Description

Footer Slideup Form is one of the best ways to ask your user to subscribe to your list without any interruption or blocking and this plugin does exactly that. It adds an AWeber subscribe form in the footer of your WordPress blog. AWeber is one of the better Auto-responders in the market and it allows you to send series of email message to subscribers. You can read my detailed AWeber review.

Installation Instructions

1. Generate an Inline form using the AWeber Web form Interface.
2. Grab the HTML code of your AWeber Form and Search for Hidden Div which lists all the hidden form fields for subscription. You will see it just after the <FORM> tag.
3. Upload the plugin folder aweber-footer-slideup in the wp-contents/plugins folder.
4. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
5. Edit Options under the Menu ‘AWeber Footer SlideUp’. Paste the hidden div HTML Code generated in Step 2.

More detailed installation instruction are here

FAQ’s

How to Edit the Tag Line Subscribe By Email for Weekly Updates?

Heading Tag Line (Optional) in the admin interface of the plugin. Leaving it blank will show the default tagline.

What is Tracking Image URL of AWeber Webform (Optional)?

AWeber RAW HTML Webform tracks the form views and other stats with an image. If you would like to see how many users submit using the footer form you need to add the unique image url of AWeber into the field value. Just near the form end tag you will see <img src=”SomeValue” border=”0″ />. Just copy the SomeValue from the HTML code and past it in Tracking Image URL of AWeber Webform. The Image URL will not be any normal jpg/gif like image.

If you have more queries and questions (Which I am sure you will have) Please post them in comments below and I will be more than happy to help you on this matter.

No related posts.

Although emails from AWeber are already whitelisted on an ISP level, emails may be filtered on an individual level. So it is very important to make your readers understand what to expect with the subscription and make sure you get place in your readers’ inbox in a folder which he checks regularly.

First impression is the last impression and according to me the best way to ask your readers’ to whitelist you is to do that in the welcome email. Well written welcome email should always make the life of your reader easy by giving him some good call to actions which can benefit both the reader and the sender.

Apart from the welcome email other places to make your request to whitelist you.

• In a thank-you page just after the user has hit the submit button. You need to use a custom thank-you page in AWeber for this to work.
• A line at the end of each email might even work for you – especially if you include other interesting content in the broadcast.

If you have something more to share I am open to more ideas!

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No matter what selecting the right tool is the most important aspect for any business. When I started Go4Expert.com Newsletter few years back I was not aware of AWeber at that time and so started using Feedburner for my newsletter. I do not prefer Feedburner (see why here) so I switched to AWeber for Go4Expert Newsletter and see how many newsletter readers I lost in the switch.

Newsletter Readers in Feedburner

Newsletter Readers in AWeber

Not to mention AWeber counter also includes the new people who have subscribed.

It was never easy for me to take that decision but I realized that more I delay in taking that decision I will loose more subscribers because any reputable service require you to get users to opt into them – even though you’ve already done this previously.

I’d like to ask readers who they use to deliver their email newsletters? I have always preferred AWeber over their competitors.

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